Agenda item

Reference was made to article 21 of the minute of meeting of this Committee of 17 September, 2009, whereby officers were instructed to write to the Scottish Government to ascertain whether it would be possible for the Council to amalgamate all charitable trusts with assets of £20,000 or less, in order to create a worthwhile fund for the citizens of Aberdeen, and to report back thereafter. Further to this meeting, officers had advised that the appropriate body to contact on this issue would be the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR), rather than the Scottish Government. The Committee had before it on this day the report as requested at the aforementioned meeting.

The report advised that officers had written to the OSCR as instructed, and had received a response that indicated that the proposal was acceptable in principle, and that a new trust should be set up in the first instance, to which the assets of the other charitable trusts could then be transferred. It was therefore proposed that a trust be established for the benefit of the citizens of Aberdeen, with the specific charitable purposes matching those of the existing charitable trusts which were to be transferred into it; and for members of this Committee to be the trustees. It was explained that once this new trust was established, it would be necessary to write to the OSCR to disestablish each of the existing charitable trusts with assets below £20,000 and to transfer the said assets to the new trust.

The OSCR had requested that this work be undertaken in batches to take account of their staff’s workload, so it was unlikely that this exercise would be completed by March, 2011.

The report continued that returns for the charitable trusts would require to be presented to the OSCR for the year to 31 March 2010, and as the amalgamation process would only commence further to this report being approved, these would be in a similar form to those presented last year. It was intended that individual trustee reports would be presented for those charitable trusts where amalgamation was not being considered and a single trustee report would be provided to cover charitable trusts due to be amalgamated. In addition, and to ensure compliance with the OSCR requirements, it was proposed that the status of all of the charitable trusts be reviewed as part of this process. If thought appropriate, proposals would be submitted to committee for approval to remove them from the charity register, or to transfer their assets to another more relevant external charitable body.

Appended to the report were details of the assets, which were subject to audit, of all the charitable trusts under review showing the value of their asset as at 31 March, 2010.

The Committee resolved:-

(i)         to note the actions taken by officers to date;

(ii)        to approve the outline proposals for a new charitable trust to be established, with the members of this Committee as trustees;

(iii)       to approve the transfer of charitable trusts with assets of less than £20,000 into the new trust;

(iv)       to note the likely timescales for completion of the work; and

(v)        to approve the outline of actions proposed by officers within the report to take matters forward.